Same income, two rate cards: salaried versus business or AOP.
Salaried saves
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Salaried tax
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Business / AOP tax
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Two rate cards for the same rupees
Pakistan does not tax all individuals on one schedule. The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) runs two separate slab cards. A salaried person, defined as someone whose salary is more than three quarters of taxable income, uses a lighter card that starts at a token rate just above the tax free threshold. Everyone else, sole proprietors, freelancers, consultants, and Associations of Persons, uses the business card, which opens far higher and climbs faster. Feed the same taxable income into both and the salaried figure is usually a fraction of the business one. This calculator puts the two side by side and tells you the gap in rupees and in effective rate.
That gap is policy, not an accident. The salaried card was deliberately kept gentle, and the entry rate was cut in a recent Finance Act. The business card carries the heavier load. Because both move every budget, read the figures here as the ones the tool currently applies and confirm the live slabs with the FBR before you plan around them.
PKR 3 million through both cards
Enter PKR 3 million of taxable income, the default. On the salaried card the first PKR 600,000 is free, the next PKR 600,000 is taxed at 1 percent for PKR 6,000, the slice from PKR 1.2 million to PKR 2.2 million at 11 percent for PKR 110,000, and the slice from PKR 2.2 million to PKR 3 million at 23 percent for PKR 184,000. Total salaried tax is PKR 300,000, an effective rate of 10 percent. On the business card the same income is taxed at 15 percent above the threshold, then 20 percent, then 30 percent, producing PKR 590,000, an effective rate of just under 19.7 percent. The salaried person saves PKR 290,000 on identical earnings.
| Line | Salaried | Business / AOP |
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The chart shows the two bills against the same income. The salaried column is lighter than the business one.
The 75 percent line that decides your card
Which card applies is not a choice you tick. It follows the source of your income. If salary is more than 75 percent of your taxable income you fall on the salaried card; if it is at or below that share you are on the business card. This matters most to people with mixed income, a salary plus consulting fees, or a job plus rental and freelance work. Add enough non-salary income and you can slip off the gentle card onto the heavy one, which is a far bigger swing than the extra income itself. Both totals in this tool also include the surcharge the FBR applies once taxable income passes PKR 10 million, so the comparison holds at higher incomes too.
Reading it without overreading it
A practical use is to value the salaried structure when you weigh employment against going independent. If leaving a job for freelance work shifts you from the salaried card to the business card, the tax difference this tool shows is a real cost of independence that should be priced into your day rate. The common mistake is assuming the business card is always punishing; at modest incomes the gap is smaller, and a registered company is taxed differently again on a flat corporate rate, which is a separate question from this individual comparison.
This calculator is for anyone deciding how to be taxed, employees eyeing a freelance leap, consultants choosing between sole proprietor and salaried structures, and AOP partners sizing their liability. For the salaried bill in isolation use the income tax calculator, and for the average rate on any income use the effective tax rate calculator.
Can I choose to be taxed as salaried instead of business?
No. The FBR assigns the rate card based on whether salary exceeds 75 percent of your taxable income, not on preference. You can influence it only by genuinely changing your income mix, for example by how much you earn as salary versus fees, and any such restructuring should be done carefully and within the rules.
Do freelancers in Pakistan always use the business rate card?
Generally yes, because freelance and consulting income is business income rather than salary, so it falls on the business and AOP card the calculator uses. There have at times been concessionary regimes for exported IT services, which can change the picture, so a freelancer earning from abroad should check the current export-services treatment with the FBR rather than assume the standard slabs.